Digital Flexible Packaging: ePac Orders 24 More HP Indigo 20000s

HP Indigo, the Israeli maker of production-level EP printers for flexible packaging, recently announced an order for 24 units of the HP Indigo 20000, the company’s 30” EP web for that application. The deal is the biggest to date for the 20000 and, same as last year, the buyer is the Israeli company’s best customer for the printer, ePac Flexible Packaging (Middleton, WI); ePac set the previous record by ordering 20 units in 2018. ePac currently operates 28 of the 20000s at 12 locations and expects to operate 52 at 20 locations after all the latest batch are installed next year. In money terms, the deal is also big: Pricing for one HP Indigo 20000 is unpublished but, even assuming a discount for buying 24, this latest purchase will likely total well over $20 million just for hardware; spending over time for toner, parts, and service will add substantially to that. Read more »

Getting Ready for Print 19: The Keypoint Intelligence Pre-show Guide

Each year the schedule of shows changes slightly. Some shows merge, others grow organically, and still others disappear from the calendar. This year Print 19 closes out is long run with more than 80 education sessions, the Red Hot Technology awards, TechTalk panels, TechWalk guided tours, and a keynote from Nick Thomson of WIRED Magazine that should be on everyone’s agenda. Once again, Keypoint Intelligence will host the InfoLunch at noon on Thursday, reviewing the most impactful insights you can use to guide your business. Four members of the Keypoint Intelligence staff will also be presenting in the education forums. Print19 promises three days of opportunity for print service providers, in-plant printers, marketing service providers, and the users of those services.

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Memjet Announces Third Generation Inkjet Technology: ‘DuraFlex’

Inkjet technology supplier Memjet recently announced a new category of inkjet heads, inks and supporting print modules called ‘DuraFlex.’ The news marks a major addition to the offerings of the San Diego company, which now supplies thermal inkjet heads and dye-based inks to about 40 makers of systems that print labels, mail, office documents, corrugated, and other applications. DuraFlex will differ from the longstanding ‘VersaPass’ technology inside most current Memjet-based printers because of two main features: the heads are long-lasting and the inks are pigmented, yielding durable print; DuraFlex shares these two features and the “Dura” prefix of Memjet DuraLink, the head technology announced last year for use in industrial print applications. DuraFlex thus is a third generation of Memjet technology, one that will occupy a space between VersaPass (mostly for benchtops, starting in 2010) and DuraLink (industrial printers, just now commercially available), and it will be marketed to OEMs accordingly.

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Should You Make a Purchase at the Next Print Show?

Are you an executive or decision-maker working for an organization that provides printing services? Do you have a plan in place to stay up to date with the ever-changing hardware and software landscape? Are you taking steps to ensure your continued profitability and revenue growth? Remember, your business plan is an on-going, live document that should be reviewed against these criteria on a regular cadence. Print is arguably a more competitive industry than most, as players aren’t just competing with each other but with online print aggregators and online marketing communication solutions. In response to this added competition, as well as continued consolidation of the market, many PSPs have turned to new products to help drive profits.

However, which new products are worthy of investment? And, what hardware will best enable these products? These are the questions that decision-makers must address as they look to the year ahead, on top of assessing maintenance levels, renewing lease agreements, and other factors that can impact the bottom line. With so many variables, updating the business plan for the coming year is an essential step for those at the executive level. Flying blind with no specific set of objectives removes a company’s ability to proactively control their future, leaving them reacting to events as they occur instead of laying the infrastructure to be prepared for market changes.

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The Rise of Digital B2

Personally, I always believed in the potential of B2 digital since it become mainstream at drupa 2012 with several vendors showing or previewing products. Of course, new product concepts often take longer in hitting the market than expected, accordingly it took some time for real placements to arrive at customer sites. In our research we already identified a number of benefits these presses bring, and therefore it was no surprise to see installations rise quickly for several years.

For 2018 we feared to see some slowdown, as the printers with investment interest should have already made their calculation by then whether there is a business case for a B2 digital press or not. But it seems there is quite a bit of continuing interest for the devices, and 2018 placements held up reasonably well, despite drupa 2020 looming large. There are ongoing improvements on the existing devices, but there will be a lot more choice in models at drupa 2020, including next generation improvements on existing ones. But it seems that even in the meantime companies interested in B2 still find new opportunities, business cases, or are still only beginning to explore the capabilities of existing devices.

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ITMA 2019: a Massive Showcase for Digital Printing

Every four years the textile production community gathers to learn about what is new in weaving, knitting, accessorizing, printing and production management. In 2019, it was Barcelona’s turn to host ITMA – a premier garment and textile tradeshow event. With over 1,717 exhibitors in 8 halls and over 105,000 visitors from 137 countries, the event was buzzing. While we surveyed the entirety of the display showcase, our focus on digital printing kept us in halls 3 and 8.

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Memjet DuraLink and MGI AlphaJet

Memjet invited recently several European analysts and journalists to a press event into their San Diego HQ – in a move to make the Memjet brand more well known in Europe. Memjet is the R&D company behind a set of highly compact inkjet heads and assemblies that are integrated by small to large size OEM partners into their printing equipment. Memjet’s approach especially enables small companies or custom integrators to bring their business ideas to life, which could never afford their own inkjet head development. Memjet markets their heads to OEMs, not to end users. Still Memjet supports marketing printers that are using their inkjet heads and has coined the tag line “Memjet inside “. This works well, if the company behind is well known enough and accordingly Memjet is stepping up their market visibility to drive further growth.

From an early days R&D lab in Australia with a bunch of patents Memjet grow into a 350+ employee company. The company started out with a model of page-wide inkjet heads, now termed VersaPass, mainly for office products. The company expanded its reach via integrators in the production print space, these in turn, helped diversify the offerings into wide format, high volume press engines and components sets.

With the next generation DuraLink the company made a big step into high volume production print. The DuraLink line of heads has been launched in 2017, which has been covered in another blog already (https://blog.infotrends.com/bright-new-horizons-for-memjet-duralink-integrators/). Memjet quotes a head life of 50 litres of ink with 2.2pl droplets (compared to 1.5 pl of the VersaPass) and the use of pigment ink, while preserving the 1,600 dpi spatial resolution of the VersaPass head. Printing resolution in the direction of the paper transport depends on the speed and ranges from 1585 dpi at 75.5 m/min to 580 at 203.6 m/min.

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2018 Financial Review: A Look at 16 Industry Players

Each year, Keypoint Intelligence publishes a document looking at the financial health of manufacturers in the global office equipment industry. The 2019 version is now available through our office services; it covers the performance of 16 industry players in the 2018 fiscal year. In most cases, we show the vendors’ imaging and printing revenue over a five-year span and explain the reasons for any changes. We also review operating profits within imaging and printing divisions to provide another measure of financial health. In the cases where OEMs do not report their imaging and printing performance publicly, we substitute revenue and profit information with data from our single-function printer and MFP placement and market share estimates.

Here are a few high-level findings from our latest financial review:

• On the whole, global imaging and print-related revenue increased nearly 2% from 2017-2018 – fueled by vendors like HP that saw growth
• Over a five-year period (2014-2018), overall global imaging/print revenue declined 7% – driven by declining demand and competitive pricing pressures (see chart below)
• Vendors continued to experience a wide range of profit margins in 2018 (i.e., 0.6% to 16%)

Overall industry health as reflected by revenue

Notes: This chart includes the performance of 12 OEMs; fiscal year start and end dates vary somewhat by OEM

For more information on this and other Keypoint Intelligence research and deliverables, please contact Christine Dunne at christine.dunne@keypointintelligence.com.

Western Europe: Applications in Digital On Demand Printing

Extracted from a recent InfoTrends Market Report on Print Applications:

Keypoint Intelligence – InfoTrends (InfoTrends) recently questioned respondents in the United States and Western Europe about the digital and analog print applications they offered for sale. The responses for both sides of the Atlantic Ocean are outlined in the charts below.

Respondents in the United States as well as Western Europe cited an array of printed marketing applications, including business cards, brochures/flyers, catalogs, and direct mail. Although the top two applications for U.S. and Western European respondents were business cards and brochures, there were some differences as well. For example, whereas respondents in the United States were more focused on direct mail, those in Western Europe were Read more »

Landa moving towards commercialisation

No other company captured the attention and imagination of drupa 2012 and 2016 like Landa Digital Printing. Some time later there was a launch event in September 2017 for the first Landa press installed at Graphica Bezalel in Israel including announcements of more presses to be shipped soon.

Since then, news about Landa has been pretty quiet, and even the more patient observers have wondered where the company is heading. That is until the 22nd of June, when Landa invited press and prospective customers to Edelmann, a folding carton printer in Germany, to have a look at the second S10 installed.

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